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Google makes Nano Banana 2.1 generally available and deprecates the model it replaces on the same day
The October 6 changelog entry adds gemini-nano-banana-2.1 and retires gemini-3.1-flash-image in the same breath, with every published quality comparison coming from Google's own rater tests.
Google released its newest image generation and editing model on October 6, 2026, and in the same API changelog entry it marked the model that model replaces as deprecated. The Gemini API release notes record Gemini Nano Banana 2.1 going generally available under the ID gemini-nano-banana-2.1, described by Google as "the latest high-efficiency image generation and conversational editing model", alongside a deprecation notice for gemini-3.1-flash-image telling developers to migrate to the new ID.
What shipped, and where it is live
The model page lists image generation and search grounding as supported, thinking as supported, and function calling, caching and structured outputs as unsupported, with the stable version string gemini-nano-banana-2.1 and a last update of October 2026. Google's description of the release puts the new model on the Flash tier, the faster and cheaper half of its image lineup, rather than above Nano Banana Pro.
On capabilities, Google says the model accepts up to 14 reference images in one call, holds up to four characters and ten objects consistent across edits, outputs at 1K, 2K or 4K, offers three configurable thinking levels, and can reach Google web and image search during generation. The rollout covers the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, Google Ads, and developer surfaces including AI Studio, Flow and Stitch. Mask-based editing, where only a selected region changes, is one of the four areas Google singles out.
The quality case is Google measuring Google
Google's claim is that Nano Banana 2.1 "outperforms our previous models across the board", with the comparisons running against Nano Banana 2 and the older, more expensive Nano Banana Pro. The figures circulating from Google's own human rater comparisons put overall preference at 1,050 Elo for Nano Banana 2.1 with thinking enabled, against 990 for Nano Banana 2 and 935 for Nano Banana Pro, with the widest gap on infographics, where factual accuracy is reported at 0.521 versus 0.179 for the previous model.
Those are in-house numbers against in-house baselines, which makes them a statement about Google's release order rather than about where the model sits against OpenAI's or ByteDance's image stacks. Coverage of the launch also notes that Nano Banana 2 already matched Pro on the same internal tests while Pro still produced better images in practice, which is a useful reminder of how little an internal Elo delta settles. The pattern is familiar: Tencent did the same thing with Hy Image 3.5 Preview the day before.
Text rendering is one of the four areas Google claims improvement on, and it is the one easiest to check by eye. Our own benchmark runs a neon-sign prompt against Gemini Omni, a different Google model family but the same company's current handling of legible text in generated frames.
Google is also explicit about what still breaks. Its own notes flag small text at 1K resolution, longer passages of text, and character consistency that does not always hold.
The migration date is where the sources disagree
The changelog entry as published records the gemini-3.1-flash-image deprecation without naming a shutdown date. Several write-ups of the same launch quote a version of that entry carrying an October 29, 2026 shutdown, which would leave developers a little over three weeks to change a model string. Anyone running the old ID in production should read the changelog directly rather than trust either figure secondhand.
On price, Google did not publish a cost comparison in the changelog. Outlets that read the pricing page report the per-image cost at 1K and 2K falling to roughly half that of Nano Banana 2, with input costs moving the other way.
Sources: Google Gemini API release notes, Google Gemini Nano Banana 2.1 model page, The Decoder, heise online, Notebookcheck.
Cite this
Free to cite and reuse with a link back. Data is updated as new runs and prices come in, so include the date.
SlopTV. (2026). Google makes Nano Banana 2.1 generally available and deprecates the model it replaces on the same day. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://sloptv.co/news/google-nano-banana-2-1-ga-same-day-deprecation<a href="https://sloptv.co/news/google-nano-banana-2-1-ga-same-day-deprecation">Google makes Nano Banana 2.1 generally available and deprecates the model it replaces on the same day</a> (SlopTV)
Daniel Ochoa: Covers model launches, shutdowns and pricing changes as they happen. Reads deprecation notices for a living so you do not have to.